Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Grace Has Replaced Robert Mugabe – Tsvangirai

Zimbabwe’s aging President
Robert Mugabe has been “surreptitiously but willingly” replaced by his wife
Grace, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claimed Monday.

Grace Mugabe, 50, had taken over in a “palace coup” and
no one in government was doing anything about the country’s crisis, the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader said in an end-of-year message. “No
one in government is thinking of solutions to the national challenges as
everyone is preoccupied with issues of who will succeed this tired man steering
the ship of State,” he said.

“There is no boldness to confront the national crisis;
what with an aged president and everyone around him fighting to succeed him,”
Tsvangirai added, highlighting Zimbabwe’s
growing unemployment and hunger.

He said Zimbabwe
is faced with a leadership crisis. His own popularity plummeted since a
coalition government in which he served as prime minister ended in 2013. “Unless
and until we sort out the legitimacy crisis, we will not resolve the confidence
deficit this government has suffered from local and international investors,”
he said.

Critics warned that Monday’s announcement of a ban on
cellphone recharge cards, to be implemented in six months, would threaten the
livelihoods of thousands of vendors. Most Zimbabweans are employed in the
informal and vending sectors.

Mugabe, who is to turn 92 in two months, has been in
power since independence in 1980. He appeared in relatively good health,
although he stumbled twice in public in 2015. Tsvangirai lost to him in
presidential elections in 2002, 2008, and 2013. Each time the MDC leader
claimed Mugabe rigged and intimidated his way to victory.

In the last 18 months, Grace Mugabe has taken an
increasingly prominent role in Zimbabwe’s
politics, spearheading the fight to get Joice Mujuru removed from her position
as vice-president last year. Currently head of the ruling party’s powerful
women’s league, Mugabe has denied having presidential ambitions.

The opposition criticised her recent handouts of clothes,
washing powder, and agricultural equipment procured using a government loan
from Brazil,
at rallies.